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MOSAIC Working Paper Series No MOSAIC Working Paper Series No. 2 Intersections of Climate Change Mitigation Policies, Land Grabbing and Conflict in a Fragile State: Insights from Cambodia Courtney Work May 2015 Intersections of Climate Change Mitigation Policies, Land Grabbing and Conflict in a Fragile State: Insights from Cambodia by Courtney Work Published by: MOSAIC Research Project: Climate change mitigation policies, land grabbing and conflict in fragile states: understanding intersections, exploring transformations in Myanmar and Cambodia http://www.iss.nl/mosaic International Institute of Social Studies P.O. Box 29776, 2502 LT The Hague, The Netherlands Tel: +31 70 426 0460 | Fax: +31 70 426 079 E­mail: [email protected] | Website: www.iss.nl RCSD Chiang Mai University Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University Chiang Mai 50200 THAILAND Tel. 66­53­943595/6 | Fax. 66­53­893279 Email : [email protected] | Website : http://rcsd.soc.cmu.ac.th Funded by the NWO and DFID through the CoCooN - Conflict and Cooperation in the Management of Climate Change - Integrated Project. Abstract Thirty years after Cambodia’s ‘democratization’ by the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC), the transition to a market-based economy is raging at full steam. Democracy remains elusive, but policy interventions from Cambodia’s “development partners” color the political, social, and environmental landscapes. This paper attends to the land grabs characteristic of market transitions and to the climate change mitigation strategies currently enhancing conflicts over land and resources in contemporary Cambodia. Climate change mitigation projects and large-scale land deals are highlighted in recent research as potential instigators in conflicts over land and resources. However, this literature tends to view climate change policies and land grabbing as separate processes occurring in discrete geographies where displacement or contested claims occur. Working at the intersections of large-scale land acquisitions and climate change mitigation strategies viewed through a landscape perspective, several researchers and activists have come together to examine more systematically the intersections between these processes. Through the MOSAIC research project, they focus on the complex interactions within and across social, ecological, and institutional arenas. Reviewing the literature on land grabs, conflict, and climate change mitigation strategies in Cambodia shows their interplay and the social and ecological spill- over effects embedded in the historical processes, institutional agendas, and environmental particularities in which they take place. The multi-layered interactions of historical conflict and resource use at the landscape level intervene into contemporary projects to increase gross domestic production while mitigating the effects of climate change. Timber barons, for example – politicians and military officers who acquired massive stores of capital during the post UNTAC years of conflict1 – currently hold economic land concessions (ELCs) which enable their timber trade and the development of industrial agriculture. Both the World Bank and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), referred to locally as Cambodia’s “development partners”, support these ELCs. They encourage policy makers to promote “pro-business” environments and the intensification of industrial agriculture – increasingly pointed toward flex crops that stand ready for the market to demand clean-green biofuels. These projects play out in the undeveloped, but far from empty, landscape of Cambodia’s forested hinterlands; their execution requires the forced removal of thousands of families and the violent destruction of hundreds of villages. Moreover, the trade in timber and the still- strong power structures of politico-military elites are both embedded in the country’s recent attempts to administer UN-REDD carbon-capture programs. Military land concessions and elite cultivation of logging capital conspire to both divest villagers of vital forest products and to thwart international attempts to capture the planet’s few remaining forests. By attending to these intersections and spill-over effects at the intersections of land grabs and climate change projects in Cambodia, this paper will present the ways that a landscape framework and innovative research methods can provide inroads for preventing, resolving or transforming conflicts into more cooperative scenarios. 1 This capital accumulation was fueled in part by trade in timber, touted early in the ‘transition’ to be one of Cambodia’s few viable export commodities. 1 Introduction Twenty years after Cambodia’s ‘democratization’ by the United Nations Transitional Authority (UNTAC), the transition to a market-based economy is raging at full steam. Democracy remains elusive, but economic policy interventions from Cambodia’s “development partners” continue to color the political, social, and environmental landscapes. This paper attends to the land grabs characteristic of market transitions and to the climate change mitigation strategies currently enhancing the restriction of access to land and resources in contemporary Cambodia. Climate change mitigation projects and large-scale land deals are highlighted in recent research as potential instigators in conflicts over land and resources. However, this literature often views climate change policies (Knight 2013; Salehyan 2014; Sunga 2014) and land grabbing (Borras et al. 2011; Baird 2011; Peluso and Lund 2011) as separate processes occurring in discrete geographies where displacement or contested claims occur. Working at the intersections of large-scale land acquisitions and climate change mitigation strategies viewed through a landscape perspective, the MOSAIC project currently underway aims to provide a lens with which to study complex interactions within and across social, ecological, and institutional arenas (Hunsberger et al. 2015). Three literature streams are reviewed for this purpose: that on land grabs in the form of economic land concessions (ELCs), on conflict, and on climate change mitigation strategies in Cambodia. This review shows the interplay of these issues embedded in multi-layered interactions of historical conflict and resource use, their current social and ecological spill- over effects, and how the historical and contemporary processes intervene into projects to increase gross domestic production while mitigating the effects of climate change. For example, politicians and military officers who acquired massive stores of capital during the post UNTAC years of conflict—fueled largely by trade in timber, touted early in the ‘transition’ to be one of Cambodia’s few viable export commodities (World Bank 1992; Hughes 2003) – are today holders of ELCs through which they continue to trade in timber and develop industrial agriculture (Davis 2005; Un and So 2011; Neef, Touch, and Chiengthong 2013). Cambodia’s “development partners”, like the World Bank and USAID, support these ELCs. They encourage policy makers to promote “pro-business” environments and the intensification of industrial agriculture (USAID 2010; World Bank 2014), which is increasingly pointed toward flex crops that stand ready for the market to demand clean-green biofuels (Borras, McMichael, and Scoones 2010; McMichael 2010). These projects play out in the differently developed, but far from empty, landscape of Cambodia’s forested hinterlands (Fox 2002; Baird 2011; Springer 2011; Harms and Baird 2014). Their execution involves the forced removal of families and the violent destruction of villages and ecosystems. Furthermore, the long-standing trade in timber and the still-strong power structures of politico-military elites (Davis 2005; Le Billon and Springer 2007) are both embedded in the country’s recent attempts to administer UN-REDD carbon-capture programs (Yeang 2012; Milne 2013; Poffenberger 2013). Military land concessions and elite cultivation of logging capital conspire and divest villagers of vital forest products and also thwart international attempts to capture the planet’s few remaining forests. By attending to these intersections and the multiple layers of power and use, one community forest based carbon capture initiative in Oddar Meanchey (the monk’s forest) has successfully negotiated forest conservation for international carbon capture amid the interests of local forest users and the politico-military groups cutting luxury wood for profit (Bradley 2009; Yeang 2012; Poffenberger 2013; Thuon 2013). In Cambodia the institutions that could effectively prevent or transform resource conflicts are weak where they are most needed and we find that individuals, not laws, resolve conflicts. This paper will explore the intersections of land grabs and climate change projects in two field landscapes in Cambodia and will suggest that such a lens can offer insights into the preventing, resolving or transformation of conflicts into more cooperative scenarios. The brief example above of conflict mediation from the Oddar Meanchey province in Northwestern Cambodia has its distinctive social and environmental peculiarities that helped lead to a positive conflict mediation (Poffenberger 2009). The MOSAIC project will focus on two different landscapes in Cambodia, each with their particular social, political, and environmental characteristics. Within these distinctive landscapes a collaborative action research approach will combine the skills and efforts of grassroots communities, activist civil society organizations, and academic researchers
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